Lewiston buildings nominated for National Register of Historic Places

Lewiston's Downtown Commercial Historic District and the 19th-century Le Messager building on Lisbon Street have been nominated by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Sun Journal reported the historic district includes more than 80 buildings on lower Lisbon Street and parts of Main Street. The two nominees are Maine's only entrants.

The benefit of being on the national register is the availability of state and federal tax credits for renovations, Gil Arsenault, the director of planning and code enforcement for Lewiston, told the newspaper.

The four-story building that housed Le Messager for most of its run was built in the 1880s. Le Messager was the longest running French-language newspapers in the country when it stopped publishing in 1966. Building owner Gabrielle Russell told the paper she is hoping to use tax credits to rehab the third and fourth floor into residential units.